1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a conveying installation provided with a number of rollers for conveying commodities, more particularly to a conveying installation capable of automatically discharging sorted commodities from conveying lines. The conveying installation according to the invention is capable of composing orthogonally intersecting conveying lines by way of using them at a corner of conveying route.
2. Description of Related Art
In any of automated factories, commodities are automatically conveyed on conveying lines by a conveying installation. Generally, any conveying installation disposes a number of rollers to allow commodities to be conveyed smoothly in accordance with rotation of the rollers.
Recently, in order to automatically sort commodities, there is a demand for replacing commodities on a conveying installation onto another conveying installation or delivering specific commodities to a warehouse or boxes from a conveying installation to store them. As a conveying device having a specific structure for discharging commodities, a cluster for a loading/unloading conveyer is disclosed in the Laid-Open Japanese Patent Publication No. HEI3-46906 of 1991. Each main body of the cited cluster is provided with a number of small rollers at 45.degree. of angle, where a plurality of main bodies are secured to a rotating shaft at intervals. By hindering movement of commodities on the cited cluster, commodities can be discharged in the orthogonal direction from the conveying line.
As another installation for discharging commodities from a conveying line, a conveying installation called "cross module" is used.
Concretely, several of thin-width belt conveyors are disposed between rollers composing a main flow for example to have belt conveyors ascend or descend by operating pneumatic cylinders, thus composing the cross-module. When operating the cross-module, a belt conveyer is lifted above rollers of main flow at the moment when a specific commodity has just arrived above the belt conveyer, and then the commodity is placed onto the belt conveyer by having the belt conveyer scoop up the commodity, and finally the commodity is discharged in the direction orthogonally intersecting the convey line.
The above-cited conveying installation can discharge a specific commodity out of the conveying installation, and yet, exerts own capability to effectively sort commodities.
Nevertheless, among those conveying installations based on conventional art, since the above-cited cluster for a loading/unloading conveyer disposes a number of small rollers in the periphery of main bodies, it is essential that a number of small rollers and pins for rotating the small rollers be provided for the cluster system, thus requiring a large number of parts as a defective point. Moreover, since any of conventional conveying installations needs to assemble small rollers and pins in narrow locations by tightly aligning them, assembly work entails difficulty. Moreover, since any of convention-al conveying installations is provided with a number of parts, and yet, since a number of parts are disposed in small locations, there is discontent against them because of easily breakable structure.
Even the above-cited conveying installation called "cross module" entails difficulty in the assembly work because belt conveyors are disposed between narrow space provided for rollers and yet a number of easily breakable parts such as pneumatic cylinders are also provided therefor.